Herrera, 63, is the son of migrant workers and the first member of his household to attend college. His family lived for a time in Logan Heights, and Herrera graduated from San Diego High School in 1967. During the 1970s, he served as director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park.

Herrera earned his bachelor’s degree from UCLA and his master’s from Stanford. In 1990, he received a master’s in fine arts from the University of Iowa.

He currently holds the Tomas Rivera Chair in Creative Writing at UC Riverside. During his career, he has published dozens of volumes of poetry, prose, plays, children’s books and young-adult novels.

Among his honors are the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry and the Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry.

To become California’s next poet laureate, he must win confirmation from the state Senate.